In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Pleased to Meet You.”

One of my bucket list items is to take time to read more for pleasure. I tend to read to learn something. Usually about my faith, or those who help me to live out my faith. (Role-models.)  Many of the Saints are these for me.

I don’t think there’s some deep dark physiological reason why I no longer read much for pleasure. (There must be worse things than this, right?)  As a child/teenager I only read for pleasure!  It was a wonderful form of therapy for me, (which often helped me to escape from the sometimes dramatic life of my childhood.)

Every year at the start of summer vacation I began with a wish list of books I wanted to read!  And every year I always began with the same book to start me off: Island of the Blue Dolphin, by Scott O’Dell!  (I still have my treasured copy!)  I never tired from this.  I always looked forward to Karana, the brave twelve year old protagonist, kick-starting me into the frenzy of gobbling up the many books I’d read in the course of those few short months.

Maybe forgetting to read for pleasure happened when the kids started to be born.  (Yes, always blame the kids.)

There was so much to learn now.  (Beyond how to live abandoned alone on an island that from your perspective belonged to dolphins.)

So much to accomplish.  (Besides befriending a pack of wolves.)

So much to live for.  (Not that making my own canoe to escape from the island was no longer important.)

Thus, my faith and the heroes who lived it out were the inspiration I needed to live out this evolving life of mine.  (And still need today.)

Did the Saints, as they were living out their own ordinary lives, think the same thing?  Did they look to others for inspiration and support?  Did they draw upon the examples of others to live out their own life in a manner pleasing to God?  Did they seek out others to help them understand the “blue-print for living,” which our God had written?

I like to imagine they did.

I like to imagine that Joan of Arc looked back upon the courageous way the Blessed Virgin Mary lived out her faith and found the added amount of strength she needed to do battle.  I like to imagine that Teresa of Avila drew great wisdom from Catherine of Siena in the journey to be named together as great Doctors of the Church.

They are all ordinary women who ended up doing extraordinary things for the Lord, precisely because of their deep and abiding intimate communion with Him in prayer. They walked the talk.

All of us are called to the same manner of life. We are all called to gather strength from the other to live in a community that has been given the same Holy Spirit, access to the same wonderful saving Word of God, and the graces which are mediated from Jesus Christ through His Body, in the Sacraments of His Church.

I am grateful for these people.  I have learned much from them. And I find pleasure as I imagine them having met one another along the road in their own personal faith walk, from time to time.

“Monica, meet Rita.”